I’m not gonna lie: I was vaguely floored to learn the identity of the writer on this one. So in an effort to treat you to the same sort of cognitive dissonance I recently enjoyed, I encourage you to do your honest best to guess who penned the following WSJ oped last November 18 based only on the excerpt below. And yes, I realize absolute identification may be a tall order if you don’t know the answer to begin with, so work your way up to it: what gender do you believe the writer is; what political party do you think he or she belongs to; which news network is this person most likely to watch (or even contribute to); etc. Once you’ve formulated your theory, click the link and collect your marbles.
How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us? How do politicians’ stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers’? I answered the question in that speech: Politicians derive power from the authority of their office and their access to our tax dollars, and they use that power to enrich and shield themselves.
The money-making opportunities for politicians are myriad, and Mr. Schweizer details the most lucrative methods: accepting sweetheart gifts of IPO stock from companies seeking to influence legislation, practicing insider trading with nonpublic government information, earmarking projects that benefit personal real estate holdings, and even subtly extorting campaign donations through the threat of legislation unfavorable to an industry. The list goes on and on, and it’s sickening.
Astonishingly, none of this is technically illegal, at least not for Congress. Members of Congress exempt themselves from the laws they apply to the rest of us. That includes laws that protect whistleblowers (nothing prevents members of Congress from retaliating against staffers who shine light on corruption) and Freedom of Information Act requests (it’s easier to get classified documents from the CIA than from a congressional office).
The corruption isn’t confined to one political party or just a few bad apples. It’s an endemic problem encompassing leadership on both sides of the aisle. It’s an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests.
(h/t Roger Ebert)
